In
the last two weeks, two of my old friends – civil servants both – came to meet
me in my office, at different times. I hadn’t met them in years. With both of
them, I ended up talking about our professions. One of them brought more
feedback on the Bhutanese media while the other updated me on the state of the
civil service.
The government
officials, my friend told me, fear the Bhutanese media for being misquoted.
They don’t want their division, department, ministry or sector to be reflected
in a negative light. They also fear the media when they are caught unprepared
because that’s when they are most vulnerable and are most likely to tell the
truth. He told me that younger and more educated civil servants are more open
towards the media and they discuss the issues the media carry more frequently.
The ‘bosses’, he said, are more likely to consider the media sort of a ‘problem
creator’. It’s a fresh perspective on the media. It comes from a remote
dzongkhag where my friend works. I think
his observation is generally true.
The
other friend brought me news about the civil service. After a few years in the
civil service, he is more confident about himself but less vocal about the
government system. He said now he was more mature and knew what to talk about
and what not to, particularly with the bosses. He said that if one wanted to
rise in the system, one should respect the well-established hierarchy and with
it opinions and ways of doing things according to the hierarchy. Which, he
explained to me, meant that the dzongda’s opinion or ways of doing things, for
example, always mattered more than a planning officer’s however more
professional or innovative the latter’s is.
